In a conventional offset printer, a series of rollers transfers ink in the form of an image from roller to roller until the ink is finally transferred onto a media. In this process, the media is fed into a pressure nip formed between the last two rollers, sometimes referred to as a transfer roller and a media roller. In most instances, the transfer roller includes a blanket, such as an electrically conductive rubber-coated fabric, for transferring the ink to the media. However, the blanket is typically secured to a cylinder of the transfer roller via a clamp or other fastening mechanism, which introduces a discontinuity on the surface of the transfer roller.
Unfortunately, this discontinuity disrupts a sensitive pressure distribution between the transfer roller and media roller when the discontinuity of the transfer roller engages the media roller. Among other problems, this disruption affects the quality of the printing on the media, resulting in problems such as banding on the media in areas of the media that pass adjacent to the discontinuity of the transfer roller.
Accordingly, conventional printers fall short of desired printing quality by failing to compensate for these discontinuities.